Caught in the Crossfire: A New International Force Hopes To Stop the Gangs, Police, and Vigilantes Terrorizing Haitians
NEED TO KNOW
Caught in the Crossfire: A New International Force Hopes To Stop the Gangs, Police, and Vigilantes Terrorizing Haitians
HAITI
Nanouse Mertelia was inside her house in Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince on a recent Saturday in September when she heard an explosion. Running outside to check on her son, she found him on the ground, his leg and arm blown off.
“Come get me, come get me, please mama,” he begged her, as she recounted to the Guardian. “(But) by the time we got to the hospital, he died.”
The blast occurred at a birthday party as an alleged gang leader was distributing gifts to children in the Cité Soleil neighborhood of the capital. This quarter is controlled by Viv Ansanm, a powerful gang coalition designated by the US as a foreign terrorist organization. The explosion was due to a drone attack by security forces, part of an operation to wrest control of the capital away from the gangs that terrorize its population.
It killed eight children and seriously injured six more.
The incident highlights how the situation in Haiti has spiraled out of control, leaving civilians caught in the crossfire between gangs, state officials, and also vigilante groups, and the violence their war on each other produces.
“With armed gangs expanding their influence, self-defense groups morphing into gang-like entities and public officials acting with impunity, Haiti is slowly becoming something like the Wild West,” said William O’Neill, the United Nations’ human rights official for Haiti. “It’s hell on earth… desperation is not some abstract idea in Haiti – it is a lived reality.”
Most of Port-au-Prince has been under Viv Ansanm’s control for 18 months. Last year, gang-related violence claimed 5,500 lives across the country – another 1,600 people died in the first quarter of this year. More than 1.3 million people have been driven from their homes due to the chaos – sexual violence is widespread, as is gang recruitment of children. Meanwhile, the economy is in tatters, and UN officials warn that half of the country is going hungry.
Last year, a Kenyan-led mission arrived to help. But it barely exceeded 1,000 police at its peak, and was never well enough funded to fulfil its brief.
Now the Trump administration has a plan, presented to the UN Security Council, which approved it last week, that would create a so-called Gang Suppression Force, a 5,500-strong international security operation charged with bringing order.
“Haiti is facing an unprecedented, multi-dimensional crisis that requires our decisive attention,” said Eloy Alfaro de Alba, Panama’s ambassador to the UN.
The initiative comes around two months after Haiti’s transitional presidential council appointed businessman Laurent Saint-Cyr as the country’s head of state. The founder of a local insurance company, Saint-Cyr, is the former leader of the American Chamber of Commerce in Haiti and Haiti’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry. His prime minister, Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, who formerly ran an Internet company, also once led the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Soon after Saint-Cyr took the oath of office, he faced pushback. Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, the leader of Viv Ansanm, immediately threatened to oust the new president and his premier, the Associated Press reported.
Chérizier was a Haitian police officer with deep ties to top politicians until he was fired in 2018 for organizing extrajudicial killings, explained InSight Crime. Since then, he has evaded capture while organizing Haiti’s gangs into an alliance that is ostensibly united in their goal to stop foreign influence in their country and take over politically.
Other efforts have failed to bring order to Haiti, but the Gang Suppression Force is the most aggressive effort yet to challenge Chérizier and his allies. Commentators say the force must adopt rules on how it will detain and imprison alleged criminals or a culture of justice and accountability will never take hold in the country, something that is needed to get it back on track.
The problem is, there are few institutions left to even begin to enforce accountability – Haiti has not had an elected government of any kind since the last president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in 2021. The Transitional Presidential Council, appointed by an unelected cabinet last year, is theoretically a government but it doesn’t have much control over the country. Its mandate expires next year.
Meanwhile, the new president and prime minister are tainted by ties to corrupt businesspeople and are suspected of working with the gangs, along with other government and security officials, say analysts.
“That’s why criminals are roaming freely and acting so arrogant,” Pierre Esperance, director of the Haitian National Network for the Defense of Human Rights, told El País. “The gangs wouldn’t be so arrogant if they didn’t have the complicity of the authorities.”
He added that without strengthening Haitian institutions, the current situation cannot be contained: “I don’t think there’s a real intention to put an end to the gangs. The problem is institutional. Our institutions are collapsed, and we need to work on governance and justice alongside security. We can’t stand idly by, waiting for help to arrive from outside.”
However, that help, in the form of vigilante groups that have sprung up to take back control of the streets, is now becoming part of the problem: They are proving just as deadly to civilians as the gangs and the police operations – especially those using drones – to fight them.
Haitian poet Ricardo Boucher recounted how his childhood friend, Carlos Gustave, was killed by members of the vigilante group, the Carrefour Feuilles self-defense brigade, last year. Gustave’s ID said he was from the Grand Ravine slum, Boucher said, and the vigilantes considered anyone from that area a criminal.
Two weeks ago, meanwhile, his neighborhood’s vigilante group beat an elderly neighbor because his ID card was damaged and illegible.
“I believe the brigades do more harm than good,” Boucher told the Washington Post. “They are a temporary fix – a palliative…If nothing is done, the abuses committed by the brigades will be worse than those of the gangs.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
US Pressures EU to Weaken Green Laws to Save Trade Deal
EUROPEAN UNION
The European Union is coming under US pressure to water down its green legislation plan to avoid further tariffs – months after the two parties agreed on a deal to prevent an all-out transatlantic trade war, the Financial Times reported.
Among the climate laws the EU is being asked to weaken is the requirement for non-EU companies to prepare “climate transition plans.” The US is also asking that the EU change its supply chain environmental laws so that companies from the US and other countries, “with high-quality corporate due diligence,” would be exempt.
The EU’s corporate due diligence rules, in effect since last year, require that companies operating in the bloc identify any environmental and social harms in their supply chains, in an effort to target pollution and forced labor.
According to a US government position paper seen by the Financial Times, the Trump administration considers the legislation as a “regulatory over-reach” that puts significant economic and regulatory costs on US companies, while negatively impacting their ability to compete in the EU market.
US President Donald Trump has already pressured the EU to demonstrate that its digital rules on content moderation and digital competition are not harmful to US tech companies or to change them to avoid tariffs, a move that has cast doubt on whether the trade deal agreed upon in July will hold.
The deal set tariffs on most EU exports to the US at 15 percent but also allowed room for future concessions from the EU.
EU officials familiar with the matter have described the request as “a one-way street,” rather than as a negotiation, as the US is not offering concessions in return.
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said EU regulations were a “red line.” However, the bloc is already scaling back on them, as part of a wider effort to cut red tape but also as a result of complaints from European businesses and governments.
The effort to simplify the rules, however, is proceeding slowly in the EU parliament, where left-wing lawmakers accused the conservatives of siding with the far right to weaken legislation.
Ethiopia Accuses Eritrea of Planning Military Attack
ETHIOPIA
Ethiopia is accusing the government of neighboring Eritrea of cooperating with an opposition group based in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region to prepare for a military offensive, sparking concerns of renewed fighting between the two over control of the Red Sea, the BBC reported Wednesday.
In a letter addressed to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister Gedion Timothewos claimed the existence of clear “collusion” between Eritrea’s government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The TPLF was the dominant political force for decades in Ethiopia prior to 2018 and fought a civil war against the central government from 2020 to 2022, Al Jazeera wrote.
“The collusion between the Eritrean government and the TPLF has become more evident over the past few months,” said the letter, quoted by Agence France-Presse. “The hardliner faction of the TPLF and the Eritrean government are actively preparing to wage war against Ethiopia.”
Ethiopia also accused Eritrea and the TPLF of “funding, mobilizing and directing armed groups” in the northern Amhara region in Ethiopia, where the federal army has been fighting militias known as the Fano.
Eritrea has not commented on the letter, but relations with Ethiopia have become increasingly tense in recent months.
Eritrea accuses its landlocked neighbor of wanting to take over its Assab port on the Red Sea. Ethiopia has expressed interest in regaining sea access, which it lost when Eritrea gained independence in 1993.
In his letter, Timothewos said that Ethiopia wants to carry out “good faith negotiations” with Eritrea. Meanwhile, the letter accused Eritrea of trying to provoke conflict against Ethiopia by claiming to feel threatened by Ethiopia’s intentions of gaining sea access.
The relationship between Ethiopia and Eritrea has been marked by decades of bloody clashes.
After Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia, the two fought a border war from 1998 to 2000 that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. Relations improved in 2018 after Abiy Ahmed became Ethiopia’s prime minister and made peace with Eritrea – winning the Nobel Peace Prize for it – which led the Eritrean army to support Ethiopian government forces in the war with Tigray. However, relations soured again after a peace treaty with Tigray.
Italian Leader Faces ICC Complaint Over Alleged Complicity in Gaza Crimes
ITALY
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni confirmed this week that she has been reported to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for allegedly being complicit in the “genocide” in Gaza because of Italy’s support for Israel during its ongoing war in the enclave, Al Jazeera reported Wednesday.
Meloni said in an interview earlier this week that those reported to the court include herself and two government ministers, Defense Minister Guido Crosetto and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani.
She added that Roberto Cingolani, head of the state-controlled defense group, Leonardo, may also have been named.
Her remarks were the first public comments on the situation, which the ICC has yet to confirm.
Earlier this month, around 50 people, including lawyers and public figures, filed a complaint to the Netherlands-based court, accusing the Italian government of being “complicit in the ongoing genocide and the extremely serious war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against the Palestinian people.”
These charges stem from continuing Italian arms exports and political support for Israel, despite the domestic and international backlash over Israel’s actions in Gaza.
The Italian prime minister claimed she was “amazed” at the allegations, adding that Italy has not authorized new arms deliveries to Israel after the conflict erupted following the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Reuters added.
Crosetto previously said existing transfers were limited to contracts signed before the outbreak of the war and that Rome had sought assurances from Israel that Italian weapons would not be used against civilians in Gaza.
Data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute showed Italy was one of only three countries to export “major conventional arms” to Israel between 2020 and 2024, including light helicopters and naval guns.
The United States and Germany account for 99 percent of larger arms exports.
The issue arose amid large-scale protests across Italy in the past week over Israel’s offensive in Gaza, with hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating in Rome, Milan, Naples, and other cities.
Labor unions and dockworkers have supported calls for suspending Italy’s arms trade with Israel, with port workers threatening to strike after Israeli forces intercepted the Sumud Global Flotilla carrying humanitarian aid.
Meanwhile, the ICC already has outstanding arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel has rejected accusations of genocide, saying Hamas uses civilians as human shields.
DISCOVERIES
Smoke and Devotion
Mummies often conjure up images of ancient Egypt. But new research shows that the practice of preserving bodies began much earlier – and much further east.
Archeologists studying remains in southern China and Southeast Asia recently found evidence of smoke-drying mummification practices that date back as far as 12,000 years ago, making these the world’s oldest known mummies.
That’s the conclusion of lead author Hsiao-chun Hung and her team after examining 54 burials from 11 sites, with samples from various sites, including the southern Chinese Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and others in Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia.
She reported in the Conversation that the skeletons were often crouched or squatting, with bones showing traces of low heat exposure. Using X-ray diffraction and infrared spectroscopy, Hung and her colleagues confirmed that the bodies had been smoke-dried over fire for extended periods before burial.
The breakthrough moment came during a 2017 excavation in Vietnam, when researchers compared the unusual burials to the smoked mummies of Papua New Guinea.
“It’s a bit like detective work – finding small clues, piecing them together, and growing increasingly confident in the hypothesis,” Hung told NBC News.
The practice appears to have been widespread across East Asia and may date back to more than 20,000 years in Southeast Asia. Hung added that it never completely disappeared.
“Ethnographic records show this tradition survived in southern Australia well into the late 19th and early 20th centuries,” she wrote in the Conversation. “In the New Guinea Highlands, some communities have even kept the practice alive into recent times.”
The findings also reshape long-held assumptions about mummification’s origins.
Previously, the Chinchorro people of modern-day Chile and Peru were believed to have produced the earliest mummies about 7,000 years ago.
“The term (mummification) has been taken on by other groups to identify other preserved bodies, so it’s got a much more general understanding now,” Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist from the American University in Cairo who was not involved in the study, told NBC News. “What is nice is that the idea behind it is similar, because they wanted to preserve the body.”
The authors noted that the findings also highlight a deep continuity in human culture: The desire to preserve loved ones and maintain bonds across generations.
“In both southern Australia and Papua New Guinea, ethnographic records show that preparing a single smoked mummy could take as long as three months of continuous care,” Hung explained in the Conversation. “Such extraordinary devotion was possible only through deep love and powerful spiritual belief.